Elden "Buster" Bailey
Elden Chandler “Buster” Bailey, the only child of Albert C. Bailey and Eldena Bailey, was born on April 22, 1922 in Portland, Maine. At the age of nine, he began drum lessons with Howard N. Shaw and later studied clarinet, piano, and music theory. His first public appearance as a xylophone soloist occurred at the age of twelve, at a church function in Portland. As a teenager, he played with numerous and varied musical groups including the Portland Symphony and the championship Deering High School Band. He estimates that he played over 100 performances, mostly as a xylophone soloist, before graduating from high school in 1940.
After graduating, Bailey attended the New England Conservatory of Music from 1941-42 where he studied with Larry White. Then, during World War II, he served in the 154th Army Ground Forces Band, playing clarinet in the concert band, snare drum on the field, and serving as arranger, conductor, and pianist with the jazz band. In 1946, after his release from the army, Bailey entered the Juilliard School, where he studied with Saul Goodman and Morris Goldenberg, whom he was later to succeed on the Juilliard faculty. From 1947-49, Buster was timpanist of the Juilliard Symphony, freelanced in New York’s busy recording and commercial industry and performed as one of the original members of The Little Orchestra Society. At Juilliard, Buster also met his wife, Barbara, a fellow percussionist, and since 1955, timpanist of the Bergen (New Jersey) Philharmonic.
In 1949, Goodman urged Bailey to audition for a percussion opening in the New York Philharmonic. After auditioning for Leopold Stokowski, he was invited to become a member of the orchestra, beginning a distinguished career that would continue for forty-two years until his retirement in September, 1991. These included the years during which the Philharmonic was under the directorship of Leonard Bernstein, an era that produced over 200 recordings and scores of live radio performances as well as the historic telecasts of the New York Philharmonic Young Peoples Concerts, thrilling and inspiring millions of viewers, many of them experiencing symphonic performance for the first time.
During his tenure with the orchestra, Bailey performed in virtually every major city in the world, performing in thousands of concerts with the greatest conductors and soloists of our time.
In 1969, Bailey joined the faculty of the Juilliard School, where he remained until 1993. He is the author of the highly acclaimed method book Mental and Manual Calisthenics for the Modern Mallet Player and Wrist Twisters, a book of exercises for the development of advanced snare drum technique. Based on exercises he created especially for his students over many years of teaching, these studies became affectionately known as Buster’s “Wrist Twisters.”
In 1996, Buster Bailey was inducted into the Percussive Arts Society's PAS Hall of Fame.
Elden C. Bailey died on April 13, 2004, at the age of 81.
